Why do people continue to buy into BS like this? Of course the people who will have to pay for this (corporations) want customers to believe it will raise prices - but the world just doesn't work that way.

If Papa John's could get more money for there crappy pizza then they are already charging, wouldn't they already be doing that??

Price is not Cost plus Desired Profit. Price is what the market will bear, and Profit is Price minus Cost.

requires restaurants with 20 or more locations to list calorie-content information for each menu item on a board at every establishment. The costs of this intrusive regulation would be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices

To the people biatching about the costs of coming up with the calorie counts... I'm just one guy, and if I want to know how many calories are in a homemade meal, here's what I do: I weigh the amount of ingredient I'll be using to make the meal, I check the ingredient label to see how many calories are in a serving, I do a little math, I write down the total, and I repeat that for every ingredient. Maybe that takes five minutes. What exactly is so hard about this? They don't have to send each menu item to a frickin' lab. We already know the calorie content of stuff. What, they can do all the calculations required to determine how much they should mark up their food, but they can't be bothered to do the calculations to determine how fat their food will make us?

ShadowKamui:Ritley: What an asinine argument. The cost of a board showing nutrition info is not burdensome in any manner

You do realize it costs $$$ to do the nutrition tests

If you have 20 or more locations, you have a set of standards for each dish. The on-site cooks don't get to buy their own random supplies from wherever and wing their own dishes. You know what the caloric content of your ingredients are and you know what your recipes are.

cman:Cagey B: cman: Cagey B: cman: I see it as a BS argument, but to be fair, you would be surprised how much something like this could cost

Try me. Whatever it is I'm sure will bankrupt utterly a business with at least twenty operating restaurants.

Try you? I already said it was a BS argument

The statement that we'd be "surprised how much something like this could cost" implies that doing this is a) relatively expensive and b) some sort of noticeable burden to the parties that would have to comply. If that's genuinely not what you were driving at, then whatever.

MyRandomName:Bareefer Obonghit: requires restaurants with 20 or more locations to list calorie-content information for each menu item on a board at every establishment. The costs of this intrusive regulation would be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices

The costs of a board

THE COSTS of A BOARD

Lawyer has pizza tested. Employee had put one more pepperoni on the slice. Lawyer sues. Not just the cost of a board.

Nabb1:but dear lord, someone said something negative about a provision of the ACA, so let's all crap our pants...

Be fair. How was anyone to differentiate this particular "ACA will kill businesses" claim from the millions of other "ACA will kill businesses" claims? The justification that this one time there might be some reasonable tweak to its provisions that seems to provide nearly the same public benefit while at the same time easing compliance seems to be thin. It's almost special pleading to say "OK guys, ignore all those other baseless, BS attacks we've made on the ACA--as well as the many more we're sure to make in the future--THIS ONE TIME you have to give us some benefit of the doubt, otherwise you're being unreasonable."

Rhypskallion:Random Anonymous Blackmail: Why don't they just release a chart we can all understand.

A 3-D model is better. Here's one for you--make a fist. That's the natural size of your stomach. Eat that volume of food--no more the rest is wasted. Your appetite is the result of cultural mis-training to eat more than you need, and you will get used to it in a few weeks. Carry on.

Yeah, in the one size fits all world I have to special order gloves to fit hands that can span more than an octave. I have gone for seconds at Jimmy John's, because bread is all foam.

Those calorie estimates restaurants use, even in good faith, are hardly accurate. If you need to be told that three slices of double pepperoni and sausage pizza are high in fat, calories and sodium and probably aren't good for you, then you probably aren't the sharpest tool in the shed. Of course, if you RTFA, it seems that the industry asked that the regulation be changed and members of both parties in the House and Senate seem willing to help solve the problems and still provide consumer information, but dear lord, someone said something negative about a provision of the ACA, so let's all crap our pants...

Rhypskallion:Random Anonymous Blackmail: Why don't they just release a chart we can all understand.

A 3-D model is better. Here's one for you--make a fist. That's the natural size of your stomach. Eat that volume of food--no more the rest is wasted. Your appetite is the result of cultural mis-training to eat more than you need, and you will get used to it in a few weeks. Carry on.

A 3-D model is better. Here's one for you--make a fist. That's the natural size of your stomach. Eat that volume of food--no more the rest is wasted. Your appetite is the result of cultural mis-training to eat more than you need, and you will get used to it in a few weeks. Carry on.

Headso:Langston: Headso: According to the Food Marketing Institute, which represents retail grocery chains, the current proposed menu-labeling regulation would cost the industry $1 billion in the first year of implementation

lol, sounds legit

Yeah, those are rapidly approaching the annual costs of people watching NCAA basketball games right there.

Obama could take like 5 vacations for that much!

Still doesn't approach the amount that pirating a single movie costs the industry, however.

sufferpuppet:Ritley: What an asinine argument. The cost of a board showing nutrition info is not burdensome in any manner

How bout the cost of producing that data? Having somebody determine the calorie counts for an entire menu. Think that's free?

They know how many ounces of X are in each dish, and the calorie info on that is readily available. It's like you know you put 1lb of ground beef, 2 eggs, etc into your burger patties, and made 4 patties, you can do some quick maths, and find out. Chain restaurants measure everything. Also, calorie testing is really cheap.

Aren't restaurants already required by law to have nutritional information available to customers, whether in the form of a separate board (usually found in an out-of-the-way location in the store that customers are less likely to be in) or some brochure or pamphlet that customers have to specifically request? Wouldn't this just require them to make that stuff more readily available?

My wife is a chef, and I have some serious food allergies, so I have a vague clue about how difficult something like this would be to create. The answer is not very. Accurate information would cost more--but the odds of quality analysis done by a regulating body (FDA?) seems pretty low. Accurate information would also be difficult to calculate and maintain. Ex: When you cook in oil, how much of the oil is actually retained by the item? Are all slices of pepperoni the same thickness and therefore calorie count? If suppliers change, are the replacement products equivalent or will there be variations? How often does the board get updated?

Until we have tricorders or some other tech to scan a plate and give us stats, truly accurate info will never be available.

According to the Food Marketing Institute, which represents retail grocery chains, the current proposed menu-labeling regulation would cost the industry $1 billion in the first year of implementation

That's like, $3 a person over the course of a year. Many people eat out more than once a week... So, what is that, like 6 cents per person per meal? Maybe 20 cents per person per meal, since not everybody eats out the same amount?

Bareefer Obonghit:requires restaurants with 20 or more locations to list calorie-content information for each menu item on a board at every establishment. The costs of this intrusive regulation would be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices

The costs of a board

THE COSTS of A BOARD

I see it as a BS argument, but to be fair, you would be surprised how much something like this could cost